automatically the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour members of the spanish parliament saw scenes of violence and chaos earlier this week as protesters fought back against spain's austerity measures apparently that violence wasn't enough is spain still passed a new austerity budget why are spain and so many european countries still following

this obviously failing at the austerity and yesterday julian assigned to address the united nations and discuss the united states continuing investigation of wiki leaks and bradley manning but what's the biggest lesson for journalism of the twenty first century that is songe he's now teaching us. the best for the rest of the news all hell is breaking loose in europe the streets of madrid resemble a war zone of the last few days as thousands of demonstrators took to the spanish parliament demanding that the government resign or been several arrests in injuries as riot police clashed with the demonstrators spain is under immense pressure from billionaires and banks toure's to slash government spending and pay down its deficit but those most affected by this sort of republican like austerity like public sector workers and the young and the unemployed they are having it already

spain has the highest unemployment rate in the eurozone which will only get worse with more republican like austerity demonstrators called for a national referendum to let the spanish people and not banks toure's decide their own fate when it comes to paying the ne nation's debts but those voices haven't been heard today the spanish government unveiled its new austerity budget promise. to slash forty billion euros out of their deficit by next year as we've seen other nations that have taken the poison pill of austerity particularly greece these new spending cuts will only make the situation worse that the situation in spain is already so bad that the catalonia region of spain called for an early election at the end of november which could be a vote for independence from spain altogether is the region runs into its own financial problems so where is all this leading to here for some answers david marty activist member of the international organization for the participatory society in madrid chapter and co-author of the book fanfare for the future occupy

strategy david welcome and thanks for joining us from madrid thanks for staying up late to talk with us throughout thank you for having me much appreciate it we've seen pretty violent protests in the streets of spain over the last few days how unstable is the country what reaction is there to and is it all a reaction to this new budget. if you try to. see violence is an instability minus would just only took place between protesters and the police on the class to nasa for a couple of hours on tuesday but the real picture of activism in the citizenry here in this being is not about violence more about their deep rooted we're going to zation it would you we saw on tuesday will found those people who gather around the spanish problems in madrid. we've bosses that a lot of people from all over spain to join the protest and it was very peaceful it

was very positive energy. around seven pm and the at seven pm the police charge and to disperse the crowd and there were some. small mylan minority within the protesters and of them to find a vigils were completely. legitimized by the organizers and that's what we saw in the media but we didn't see what happened. for and what we didn't see is what happened in the days before or the day after when the people in mark. i think very organized want to insist that this this was symbolic peaceful and this was not a chance and yeah yeah yeah this is you know not unlike the occupy movement united states where the media tries to make a big deal about any little bit of violence but really there's a live millions of people out there. do you think i'm curious your thoughts on catalonia voting for independence i was in that region years ago as well as in the

basque region and a lot of people talking about independence even then and that was before all this happened what are your thoughts on. title have main thoughts about catalonia it's not my area of expertise and i just think that the police there they see may be a good shot to try and get easy votes and that would get a lone ians in general they they tend to be very. independent independent where in english and. if they go and have a vote in november or december and when they want how much they want to disobey the voting i have no idea what the result will be i just know that in the last. protest that they had in the september eleventh there was a huge crowds in the streets of barcelona i don't know how many constituency represents are you seeing the same kind of thing and the mondragon region and if not is it because that worker on co-op being so large is acting as

a buffer against us or any in spain where it's very interesting what you see in the north those things he's has a very different policy than all the regions in spain i mean spain is not a federal country but it's close to that i mean they're very a town in this region so they have a huge margin of policy their. money over a large. space and so we're looking for so easy in the north of spain a studio so in the country you see much lower. unemployment rates he said before thing you mention there was twenty five percent of the country but unemployed people workers and if you look at the north of spain it's more around ten eleven percent is huge difference and this is strange correlation between that imposes that they carry now in and also spain they're they're not implementing a stereo image is the same way they doing other regions of course they're limited

by what the government is doing but they're much more generous in their local welfare state. in their employment benefits and in the pensions. and i think. that has managed to absorb some of the damage made by the crisis in the us when we don't see so much unemployment i think it should be something a something to follow yeah there's a lesson there's absolutely lesson there david marty thanks so much for being with us and. you're very welcome thank you for having me thank you. meanwhile on the other side a europe workers in greece went on the strike wednesday to protest another round of spending cuts under consideration by the greek government public employees teachers medics lawyers and even banks toure's walked off their jobs and took to the streets to protest salary and pension cuts it's the first such strike since the new conservative government took power in june that despite the mass demonstrations the greek government today unveiled another new austerity budget this time pledging to

cut a lot and a half billion dollars over the next two years so what will this latest round of cuts do to a nation already or lapsing into the banks demands here for an answer to that is richard wolffe economist a visiting professor in the graduate program for international affairs at new school university new york city and author of numerous books including the brilliant occupy the economy challenging capitalism richard welcome back thank you for your kind words thank you for joining us looking at greece and now spain is this what collapse looks like. i think we're getting there i think what we see is the rising of the mass of people and i mean that who have said we have enough we have suffered now for five years of this crisis we have suffered government bailout programs that help the banks and big corporations who are mostly responsible for the crisis we've watched the government borrow way too much money

to save the banks and not to save us and now they want us the people to suffer an austerity cut programs cut employment and use the money instead to pay bank the back the very banks they bailed out it's too much and i think the greek people have voted in two ways first the two elections this year when the two parties that used to dominate greek politics together got barely a third of the vote so that the majority of greeks voted against all of this austerity and now we're seeing because that didn't solve their problem the next step which is going into the streets having a general strike on wednesday of this week and beginning to say to the elite in greece and to the rest of europe we will not be made to pay the stupendous costs of a crisis we didn't cause and of government programs you imposed that failed to

solve it you can't put it on those given how obvious the failure of austerity is and we've seen it here in the united states just red state versus blue states we're certainly seeing greece and spain ing in ireland and in portugal country after country no country in history ever cut their way to prosperity why is it that the banks toure's in the technocrats keep pushing this what possible end game is worth this much human side. for rain and the possible destabilization of entire nations or for that matter the entire european union. because they don't see it that way for them they have had quote unquote stability had german the dominance since the second world war they simply assume it so for them the problem is who pays for this capitalist catastrophe either the bankers the rich

those who have done real well or the mass of people and their reaction is not us you've got our honor the loans we gave you you can never tax us you can never go after our wealth to solve these problems you have to take it out of the mass of people and you know the irony is when you look back at the history of empires it has been that narrow and this that blindness to the larger picture that absorbed self interest that has been the final end to those empires seems so strange to people who look back but when you're in the middle of it that's what they're doing if the masses don't and they will have that nervous and they don't want it it's almost like nicholas or exactly you know what's her name and france and marie antoinette is that your sister had her kaiser wilhelm in germany they kept pushing even when there were advisers began saying to them if you keep pushing it'll be all

over but rather than dip into the wealth of the country and the same is true here in the united states they keep pushing on tell the people push back well and richard in the just a half a minute we have left what's the lesson for the united states and. the lesson is it can happen here it's naive to imagine that the same process the same crisis the same bailout program help the top hope it trickles down pretend it doesn't matter when it doesn't that pushing on the mass of the p. which will resume here right after the election is going to provoke the american people just as it has the greek the spanish the italians the portuguese and so on very very quickly do you think there's any chance if obama is re-elected and there's a democratic majority in congress that we might see an f.d.r. direction rather than an austerity direction not until there's a mass of people it was the unions the cia all the socialists the communists in america who forced it from below until we have

a renewed occupy wall street or some equivalent the pressure won't be there and there's no indication from the obama administration that they would react to anything other than real pressure from below so that's the question i think you're absolutely right richard well thank you so much for being with us thank you again for inviting me we'll be right back. you know sometimes you see

a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw. i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that the americans call a dollar. i'm sorry. guys here's another one so. you know what that is here so. i want to listen to featuring a liberal and the truth. is that the voters.

are going to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i mean martin and we're going to break that. now into election news out of florida florida governor rick scott has restarted his illegal voter purge in the sunshine state it's a list of voters to be targeted as non citizens and kicked off the rolls has been shown to be riddled with errors and overwhelmingly focused on minority voters who tend to vote for democrats but governor scott is pushing forth regardless and this isn't the only way republicans are trying to steal the election in florida news broke yesterday on the brad blog the florida republican party's top recipient of

funding firm name strategic allied consulting has been in the business of turning in fraudulent voter registration forms florida republican party has now cut ties with streaky strategic ally consulting but not before dishing out more than one point three million in contracts to the firm this year also this firm continues to be operating in other battleground states around the nation and also has affiliations with the mitt romney campaign here to unpack all of this to explain why it's so in. and he's brad friedman himself founder and publisher of the brad blog red blog dot com brad welcome back to the program. a tom good to be here and i've got some good news for you it looks like the republican national committee has now broken ties with this firm they fired this firm after more evidence voter registration fraud by this republican firm has been discovered in florida including apparently dead people signed up registered as new voters

in one of the florida counties according to n.b.c. news late tonight wow and now i understand that this firm you were reporting that this firm was taking democratic voters and essentially reregistering them at addresses that were like strip malls and things commercial addresses so that when they go into the polling place they'll be told you're in the wrong place of they'll be given a provisional ballot and will be caught it by the right. yeah you do have that right i interviewed the supervisor of elections down there in palm beach county susan booker yesterday and she said that addresses were moved on existing registration forms to the commercial building so that yeah when people show up to vote they may not be able to vote at all they'll be disenfranchised because their address no longer matches. you know where they actually live what is on their identification they may have to vote provisionally and often those provisional ballots are not counted at all they can't even be opened as susan booker explained

to me if if there are if their address has been moved to a different precinct so she's urging all voters in florida to check with their counties to make sure that they are still registered and that they're registered at their own address i would suggest the same is true in the other states where this company which is owned by mitt romney's paid political consultant a guy by the name of nathan sproul these other states where they have also been operating north carolina nevada. virginia we've got word now that they're also in potentially in california in san diego so this is exactly what the republicans have been accusing acorn of doing for years when acorn wasn't doing this at all and now the republican national committee's top voter registration outfit in about half a dozen states is doing exactly that it's an incredible story so you said that the

r n c has fired them how much damage did they do before they got fired and how much money did they take before they got fired. well of the r. and c. reportedly paid some two point four million dollars to this group down in florida florida republican party paid one point three million dollars they were the top expenditure of this year in two thousand and twelve for the florida republican party it was all going out to this firm owned by this guy nathan sproul who year after year old election after election in state after state has been accused of shredding democratic voter registrations changing addresses doing all of these things year after year but he keeps being retained by use retained by romney this year he was. hired by mccain palin in zero eight and bush cheney in two thousand and four they keep going back to the same well this guy who seems to be committing voter registration fraud over and over again and the republicans initially tried to

say oh it was just one bad apple in one county in florida well n.b.c. news as i said is reporting late tonight that there are so far four different counties that are discovering are discovering fraudulent registration forms turned in by this same romney tied firm in florida amazing they still haven't found an illegal voter but they're but now we have election fraud on a huge scale brad friedman brilliant work brad great great site thanks a lot for being with us tonight brad. thank you john. since june wiki leaks founder julian a son has been holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london trying to avoid extradition to sweden and eventually the united states where he could meet the same fate as bradley manning or maybe even worse his crime being

a journalist there's one industry specifically mention in the united states constitution just one it's the press journalism it's the tool we the people have to keep our government in check and to make sure we the people have all the information that we need to be informed and functional members of a democracy a press the press a functional independent press is absolutely essential which is why it is named and protected in the very first amendment in our bill of rights and journalism has taken many different forms over the centuries adapting to technology as technology has changed over the years from the quill pen the printing press to radio to television and now to the internet journalism has utilized all of these methods to do its job and speak truth to power but it's that last month of the internet that

really frightens power and it's that last mouth of the internet in which wiki leaks exclusively operates the reach and speed by which information can be distributed now thanks to the internet is unprecedented it's revolutionary now in a matter of seconds a story of official malfeasance or even official good deeds can fly at the speed of light to billions of people around the planet. president obama may have laid some groundwork for the arab spring for example by going to cairo in two thousand and nine and basically telling the arab people to tear down their dictators but wiki leaks journalism is what really lit the fuse wiki leaks released information about the president of tunisia's kleptocratic greed and massive corruption two weeks later a young street vendor set himself on fire sparking the revolution in tunisia wiki leaks released information about the greed and corruption of kleptocrat moammar

gadhafi and his sons in libya and soon that country was swept up in a revolution as well and it was wiki leaks which released information about a gyptian president hosni mubarak's plan to never leave office despite the so-called presidential elections coming up and soon enough half a million people were occupying to or square demanding a revolution one that they actually eventually got that's the power of journalism in the internet age that's the power of wiki leaks which brings us to i julian and songes stuck in the ecuadorian embassy in london. is not wanted by arab nations and you're seeing firsthand the damages revelations can do to established and corrupt regimes is instead watered by western powers principally the united states let's face it wiki leaks is in part the twenty first century version of what the new york times once was both entities receive information whistleblowers both energies

publish that information back to air times actually published much of the exact same information the wiki leaks did. yet they haven't been sought the subject of federal investigations and prominent lawmakers and government officials are not calling editors of the new york times anime's of the state like they just did of julian a songe and no one is declaring c.n.n.'s anderson cooper a terrorist for reporting now what could be state secrets found in libyan ambassador chris stevens is personal journal this is a video that would it wiki leaks exposed showing our military government military gunning down journalists in iraq this is a war crime and we the people have the right to know this happened regardless of whether or not this video is labeled as top secret we absolutely have a right to know which is allegedly why bradley manning who was apparently just as concerned about it as all of us should be allegedly posed to on wiki leaks that's journalism not espionage or treason get his stories like that out there is

journalism in its purest sense of the word yet here's assad engine is speech of the united nations going down that was to the u.s. government agencies that are currently investigating wiki leaks. those government agencies a dentist. as a matter of public records having being involved in this investigation include the department of defense since called himself called the defense intelligence agency the u.s. army criminal investigation division united states forces in iraq the first division the u.s. . army computer crimes investigative unit the c.c.i. the second cyber command the department of justice most significantly and it's u.s. great injury in the exam in the of virginia the federal bureau of investigation the department of state is the puppet of states diplomatic security services. in

addition we have been investigated by the office of the director general of national intelligence the idea and the office of the national counterintelligence executive the central intelligence agency the house oversight committee the national security into agency agency committee and the p.r.i. a b. the president's intelligence the president's intelligence advisory board so what's really going on here julian assange is a political prisoner of the west today because the. because the most paranoid within the u.s. government are afraid that they may be embarrassed or even prosecuted for war crimes and they have this fear for a good reason our government no longer solely belongs to we the people and now also in large part belongs to the trans national corporate elite in their military industrial complex our media also belongs to the corporate elite just a handful of corporations own pretty much everything we see in the news media in

europe unelected technocrats and banks toure's have taken over what used to be democratic governments and one of the few forces out there that haven't yet been totally brought down by this corporate coup d'etat in the western world is wiki leaks that's why they're a threat to those in power including those in corporate power journalists have always been the underdog in their efforts to speak truth to power they've been censored smeared even murdered this is nothing new john adams the second president of states shamefully shut down opposition newspapers and jailed their editors in the biggest event of his presidency the passage of the ailing sedition laws but even back in seventeen ninety eight president thomas jefferson protested by leaving town the day adam signed the law and then ran against and beat adams two years later in the election of eight hundred largely on the issue of adams having shut down the press historically our press has largely been notepad and tape recorders as you being used as david sling shots going up against the goal liath army of the

state. but in the age of wiki leaks and the internet journalists are even more ground and the powers that be are scared to death and no matter what happens to join us on your wiki leaks this sort of internet journalism is here to stay and that's the way it is that i thursday september twenty seventh two thousand and twelve don't forget tag your it.

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